Premier Construction Software vs. SketchUp

Jonas is well suited for the construction industry and for trades that work in construction. The functionality and features are set up to streamline the processes that take place daily, weekly, and monthly. You are also able to manage the big picture and track your company's information for multiple years, making it a scalable software. Our administration and project managers can streamline work from the field to the office through Jonas and we feel that is one of the biggest benefits to Jonas

Incentivized

SketchUp is great for individually studying options for building design. It is an awesome conceptual tool to be able to quickly model and manipulate a building to study different designs. It is not good for complex geometries, especially curves. Surfaces have a hard time registering and cutting into one another. It also eventually needs to go into Revit to be more realistic as it is not good as a documentation tool

Incentivized

• Job Dashboard gives you a great summary of that job at a glance. I can even pull direct reports based on the fact that there are drill-downs.
• I can go right to the receipt with the GL report drill-down capabilities.
• Workflows make the product accessible from anywhere for approval when I have people on the road.
• Dragging and dropping reports to in AP will then go to documents under the job it is attached to.

Incentivized

• Quickly exploring solutions in 3D: We get a lot of "what if" and "what would that look like" questions. While hand-sketching and hand-drafting can be fairly quick, SketchUp allows me to quickly create 3D and 2D views of a detail or solution, change dimensions and materials in a flash, and show a client or installer the plan in minutes.
• Creating professional design documents in LayOut: Projects of any scale need good documentation. Using a combination of SketchUp and LayOut, I can create a Design Intent Set, plans for permitting, a set for mechanical trades to mark-up, etc. Having clear, appropriately-scaled drawings with dimensions or notations is a must, and we don't always have the time or budget to get an architect involved!
• Using live files to guide discussions: Not all clients are "visual" people, so opening their model and orbiting around their space in real time has been extremely helpful. Clients and trades enjoy the perspective views so much that we often include them in the full-sized drawing sets to give a good "overall" view of the project intent. For complex or tight spaces, sometimes un-rendered plans and elevations just aren't enough!

Incentivized

• Workflows could be more customized
• Invoice and Subcontractor portals could be easier to use
• Blanket changes across jobs when a policy/template is changed

Incentivized

• Ability to import Revit files and libraries.
• Ability to export true curved vector linework. There are some workarounds, needs to be refined.
• Create an OPEN MAPS connection. Since the split from Google, the source for high-quality aerials is limited.
• Ability to dock all menus to the master window on a Mac
• Ability to develop dockable menu trays on a Mac

Incentivized

We typically wait a few years in between renewing, as even older versions are powerful tools for modeling, and we make sure the amount of feature changes are worth the re-investment.

Using Premier Construction Software is intuitive. Most of the modules work the same way, so once you learn to use one, the others come easily.

Incentivized

It is very user friendly and easy to learn. It's simplicity allows for a low learning curve so more people can learn it faster. The downside is that most schools are no longer teaching it, so many younger professionals come out of school not knowing it and knowing more complex software and they have a hard time "dumbing down" their skillsets

Incentivized

Jonas Premier has some of the best support we've received in this business. Whenever there is an issue or question, we receive a response in a timely manner and get follow up as well. We have never had an issue getting something resolved and our feedback is always taken into account

Incentivized

Sketchup is so intuitive; I can't recall ever looking for official support. However, there are many user forums online that can answer more questions. The usefulness of the online forums is, however, tempered by the fact that there have been many versions of the software under different ownership and support regimes, and thus finding the right information for the right version of the software can be a challenge.

Incentivized

We came away from Sage 100. We looked at Computerease and Foundation among a few others. These two were looked at most seriously.

Incentivized

We have not evaluated any other competing software to this one. I heard about this software from a friend who teaches how to use it. She showed me in just a few minutes and I was HOOKED. I saw immediately the possible help it would be to my business. Thank you.

Incentivized

• Jonas has positively impacted our Accounts Payable and Receivable department by making tracking and processing organized and streamlined. Previously we were having to track invoices and payments through emails and various formats. We are now able to connect each AP or AR invoice to the job and subcontractor, keep track of the billing due dates, and have all the paperwork generated from Jonas.

Incentivized

• It's good in the sense that you can quickly make a drawing and speeds up the design process. Not sure how to quantify that from a ROI perspective.
• Also, good for editing an image after the fact. We can easily add a dimension that was forgotten in the original image.
• Allows team members to understand a design easier than on other software platforms.

Incentivized